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How do you live with a small amount of SSD?

i bought the 512GB version.
it's mostly empty.
I have a 1TB Thunderbolt3 drive for project and crucial stuff, and i just bought a USB3.1g2 enclosure which i'll fit with an intel 2TB to use for less crucial stuff, which was now on spinners...
Spinner are getting retired for everything except backups and archives.
 
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I'm thinking of getting a Mac Mini as I'm pretty much Apple all round these days. However, I do need to use Windows for a few things so I'll move my existing Windows 10 system to a VM. My question is - will that run from external storage?

I have a 500GB SSD that came out of my Macbook Pro when I upgraded to 1TB. (it's in an OWC carrier) I assume that will be fast enough to run a VM so that I don't need to spend a fortune on bigger internal storage on the Mini.

Has anyone any any thoughts?
 
Bandaman said:
Why? There’s literally no benefit to doing that. You can still keep a back up of everything. Apple makes that incredibly easy with Time Machine. There’s no benefit to a “pure and clean” drive except for maybe appeasing an OCD.
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It's been proven over the years that the more data that lives on a drive, the higher the chance of bit rot. Just because my opinions goes against your methods doesn't mean I'm wrong. I would argue that your way of thinking is flawed.
 
timidpimpin said:
It's been proven over the years that the more data that lives on a drive, the higher the chance of bit rot. Just because my opinions goes against your methods doesn't mean I'm wrong. I would argue that your way of thinking is flawed.
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I have 5 backups of all my things, as well as a Time Machine backup, a bootable backup, backups that are stored in fireproof safes, and data integrity checking on all drives. I’ve never lost anything even in the worst scenarios ... and there have been several. I have digital photos that go back a couple decades ... over 1 TB worth ... and none are corrupt. Being paranoid by constantly having a “clean drive” is not based on anything. It’s based on OCD. Being prepared is more efficient.
 
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I have MB Pro with 256 GB. It's bare minimum for me. OS and necessary applications, user account are on main drive. All other things: downloads folder, stored images, music, movies, iPhone&iPad backups, games etc. went to external drive.
Remember that You can move your user account to external drive too, if needed.
 
My mini has a 512 GB SSD and it's plenty for me right now. The beauty of the mini is it has four TB3 ports on the back so it can be expanded to what you need. Everything doesn't have to be stored on the internal SSD. External drives and cloud storage is the way to go if you need to save or archive large files. Perhaps some people have a special case where they need large storage on the main drive but in that case you'll just have to pay the extra cost.
 
iMac 27" with 512GB SSD. Music/Movies/Photos reside on a 2TB USB3 External. Really do not have any problems with space on the iMac itself.
 
Bandaman said:
I have 5 backups of all my things, as well as a Time Machine backup, a bootable backup, backups that are stored in fireproof safes, and data integrity checking on all drives. I’ve never lost anything even in the worst scenarios ... and there have been several. I have digital photos that go back a couple decades ... over 1 TB worth ... and none are corrupt. Being paranoid by constantly having a “clean drive” is not based on anything. It’s based on OCD. Being prepared is more efficient.
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There's no OCD or constant obsession ever. I boot High Sierra from a 120GB SSD, and all I have ever done was set my downloads folder to an external, and I only had to do that once. The end.

It seems like you assumed I boot from large SSD's. But even though it's only 120GB, it has 96.45GB free.

For my uses at least, I only benefit from having my OS on an SSD, and since spinners are much cheaper per GB, I don't waste money on larger SSD's. The biggest one I have ever bought is a 250GB 850 EVO, which is the system drive on my PC rig. And it has 170GB free.
 
timidpimpin said:
There's no OCD or constant obsession ever. I boot High Sierra from a 120GB SSD, and all I have ever done was set my downloads folder to an external, and I only had to do that once. The end.

It seems like you assumed I boot from large SSD's. But even though it's only 120GB, it has 96.45GB free.

For my uses at least, I only benefit from having my OS on an SSD, and since spinners are much cheaper per GB, I don't waste money on larger SSD's. The biggest one I have ever bought is a 250GB 850 EVO, which is the system drive on my PC rig. And it has 170GB free.
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The size of your SSD has nothing to do with anything I said. None of my stuff is backed up to SSDs. Make sure you're at least backing up your external to another drive as well. Any data you care about should be backed up twice ... as a bare minimum.
 
Bandaman said:
The size of your SSD has nothing to do with anything I said. None of my stuff is backed up to SSDs. Make sure you're at least backing up your external to another drive as well. Any data you care about should be backed up twice ... as a bare minimum.
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I have at least 2 copies of all my data. 3-4 copies with more crucial data.
 
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